It would be difficult for anyone to contest the argument that, considering his substantial body of work, Cornell Woolrich is the 20th century’s greatest writer of suspense.

There are challenges, perhaps, from Thomas Harris, whose “Red Dragon” remains the single most terrifying novel I’ve ever read (although “The Hound of the Baskervilles” doesn’t lag far behind), and the French writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who collaborated on the books on which “Vertigo” (“The Living and the Dead”) and “Diabolique” (“The Woman Who Was No More”) were based.

Still, with more than 20 novels and 200 short stories to his credit, no one could consistently send a shiver up the spine like Mr. Woolrich. Before it became a cliché, he produced the classic scenario of the calendar and clock ticking away in “Phantom Lady” (1942), in which a man has been framed for murder. Each chapter opens with a reminder of time slipping inexorably away: the 150th day before the execution; the 15th day before the execution; the day of the execution, and so on. After page 200 or so, the reader is exhausted with the unrelenting terror. It was adapted into a popular but badly flawed film noir, with the surprise coming only halfway through.

Without notable distinction, François Truffaut filmed “Waltz into Darkness” (1947) (as “Mississippi Mermaid”) and “The Bride Wore Black” (1940), in which a woman sets out to kill all the people she believes responsible for her husband being shot to death on the steps of the church right after their nuptials. As she pursues her potential victims, a detective pursues her.

In a chilling variation on the same theme, the protagonist of “Rendezvous in Black” (1948) hunts down the men he believes responsible for the death of his beloved girlfriend. He doesn’t kill them; instead, he kills the person each of them loves the most.

The most famous and best film made from a Woolrich work is Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” based on the story “It Had To Be Murder” (1942), though there have been more than two dozen other suspense films made from his stories and novels.

Early in his career, Woolrich was essentially a writer of romance fiction, his first novel selling while he was still a student at Columbia and his second winning a $10,000 prize that brought him to Hollywood and invited comparison to F. Scott Fitzgerald. It didn’t work out well, and he soon became a prolific writer of crime stories for the pulp magazines. He was one of the most successful authors for that market in the 1930s, along with Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner.

A collection of his earliest magazine work has just been published in a handsome volume, “Love and Night” (Dennis McMillan, 236 pages, $35), with mixed results. If you are a fan of Woolrich (who also wrote as William Irish and George Hopley), you have to own this book, since all the stories in it have never before been published in book form, previously only seen in the pages of such now-forgotten magazines as College Humor, Breezy Stories, and Serenade.

I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that I think I’ve read 90% of everything Woolrich has written, but the collection still contained surprises, and in it I discovered that the century’s darkest writer (in both his personal life and professional one) seems to have flirted with humor now and then. Who knew?

In one scene, he describes a man walking down the street as “looking like a million dollars going somewhere to get itself squandered.” In another, the reader can practically hear the moment when a wealthy customer prepares to make a major purchase and “the proprietress had nearly strangled on the spot in an attempt to get all the honeyed words she had to say out of her windpipe at one time.”

Situationally, there are humorous elements in these stories, too, but there is an inevitable underlying darkness, as pretty girls fall in love and get married, leaving behind other men who fail to see the hilarity of the moment, as they, too, love the girls who never give them a second thought.

In later works, the consequences for one or the other participant would be more dire.

For the already indoctrinated Woolrich fan, “Love and Night” is a great boon. For anyone new to this undervalued master of terror, begin instead with one of the novels reprinted in 2007: “Night Has a Thousand Eyes” (1945), “Fright” (1950), or the incomparable “Rendezvous in Black.”

But don’t expect to sleep comfortably if you do.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.